More than a Portal

For more than two decades, hundreds of thousands of professionals and homeowners have submitted their planning applications through Planning Portal.  

Application submission is a single step within a wider more complex planning system. Success depends on what happens before and after it: good preparation shapes whether an application is likely to succeed, while a clean post-submission process helps it reach the local planning authority, pass validation, and move through assessment more quickly. Over the past few years, having built a highly stable and secure infrastructure and platform, we have been working on both sides of that submission step in consultation with Local Planning Authorities and Professionals alike.  

More than 3 million people a year now use our guidance content to understand planning before they commit to a project. Interactive House has helped millions explore what common home improvement work typically involves. Ask Navi, launched this year, answers planning questions in plain language. And behind all of it, we’ve improved the infrastructure that connects directly and seamlessly into local planning authority back-office systems.  

From September, we take a significant leap forward, with improved workflows and new AI capabilities supporting your whole planning journey: understanding whether a project is viable, preparing and checking the application, submitting it, and moving seamlessly into Building Control, all in one fully connected platform.  

Here’s what’s changing, and why.  

Help right from the start of the planning journey

Valuable planning choices are made long before an application begins. We know how important the pre-application research stage is, it is why our guidance content reaches millions every year. Now we have gone even further, with a suite of improved and new tools that give tailored answers to specific questions. 

Ask Navi is the UK’s first AI-powered planning guidance service, giving homeowners clear, conversational answers they can trust. Unlike generic AI search, it draws only on authoritative Planning Portal content and national planning policy, turning complex guidance into reliable, plain-language support. 

Interactive House is a digital home, letting homeowners explore clear, digestible information on common improvement projects. It’s one of Planning Portal’s most popular tools, and feedback shows it’s used not only by homeowners but by consultants explaining requirements to clients. 

Householder Insights, newly launched, is the first tool of its kind on the Planning Portal platform. It provides a feasibility overview of common home improvement projects, tailored to a specific property and its area, whether permission is likely to be required, and the likelihood of approval, rooted in planning history and local trends. 

Greater accuracy, fewer avoidable delays

Planning in many situations is complex, where local constraints and therefore requirements vary between authorities, and no system will change that overnight. 

A significant proportion of invalidations happen for identifiable reasons, year after year, and those are addressable. We have spent years using our data to investigate the most common causes and design them out of the process. 

The intention is simple: fewer applications returned, fewer resubmissions, less time lost for applicants and for the authorities assessing them. 

Ahead of September, supporting document upload is being improved, with clearer guidance on what each application type requires. Professionals will be able to upload a full document set and classify it afterwards, rather than handling each file as they go, something users have told us can save several hours on a larger scheme during testing. 

From September, there will be increased support earlier in the journey. Planning constraints will surface while the application is being prepared, so flood risk, conservation areas, green spaces and other site considerations are visible rather than emerging later. Those constraints will then drive the supporting document requirements shown to the applicant, making it clear what a particular site and proposal actually needs. And AI will assist in describing the proposal and identifying the right application type at the very start of the journey, the point at which an error causes the most rework. 

In the weeks that follow, Planning Portal will provide enhanced completeness checks of applications before they are submitted. Validation and readiness checks will identify missing information and common errors while applicants can still act on them. The checks will scale with the submission: a single-storey extension and a scheme of 100 homes with 300 supporting documents are very different pieces of work, and the checking process will reflect that difference. 

One connected journey

Planning doesn’t end at submission, and neither should the support around it. 

Many projects move from planning into Building Control, but that journey is often fragmented. Planning Portal is uniquely positioned to connect both processes in one integrated platform, allowing users to reuse planning data, create Building Control applications more efficiently, and submit directly to Building Control bodies. This shared experience gives applicants, agents and authorities one account, one journey and one trusted record from planning through to compliance. 

What’s next

This is not a one-off update. Over the coming weeks and months, development continues in three areas. 

From guidance to action. Ask Navi will evolve from answering questions to actively helping users complete the right application. It will identify the correct application type, turn a conversation into a draft submission and, over time, use a customer’s existing supporting documents to create applications faster and with less duplication. 

Smarter checks, earlier in the journey. The completeness checks launching this autumn are only the first step. Local Validation Checklists will bring each local planning authority’s specific requirements directly into the application flow, while SiteCheck will use site-specific constraints to adapt the journey in real time, so the right information is captured before submission, not chased afterwards. 

One place to manage the whole project. Project Workspaces will let users manage related applications around a property, client or development in one place, with planning and Building Control sitting side by side. That means fewer disconnected records, less rekeying and a clearer view of progress from concept through to compliance. 

A planning application does not end when someone clicks submit. It ends when the local planning authority receives an application that is complete, accurate and ready to assess. 

That is the purpose of a smarter Planning Portal: to guide users earlier, detect issues sooner and connect applications directly into the systems local planning authorities rely on.  

We have spent two decades building that trusted national platform, and we will continue investing so the planning journey becomes simpler, faster and more certain for everyone involved.